The smallest garden we have rebuilt — and the one that changed the most

Small gardens are unforgiving. There is nowhere for a mistake to hide, no spare metre to absorb a bad level, and every line is read from the kitchen window. This one had been left with a broken slab path, a collapsing timber store and tired ground that grew nothing but weeds.

The build begins with a full strip-out. A mini excavator works through the old structure and slabs, and the waste is separated as it comes out so nothing is carried back through the house. With the courtyard cleared, the ground is dug down to a consistent formation and compacted in layers with a plate compactor.

The framework goes in before any surface does. Treated timber sleepers are cut on a mitre saw, drilled and fixed into a continuous raised bed running the length of the boundary, and granite setts are bedded on mortar to hold the curve between the lawn and the resin.

The porcelain terrace is laid first at the back door, set to a fall away from the house so water clears the threshold. The resin area follows: sub-base, geogrid and membrane, then aggregate and binder mixed on site, barrowed in and hand-trowelled tight against the setts and the manhole frame.

Artificial lawn is cut to the sett curve and dressed, the raised beds are filled and planted, and the finished surfaces are washed down. What was a dead strip of ground is now three usable spaces that read as one garden.